X-Mas

As usual Christmas this year rocked. After going to a Catholic mass with RB and her sister – who is visiting from Moscow – Christmas Eve I headed to PL. There I spent about 24 hours with the family and had a pretty good time. We went to candle light service at a new church in Burnsville that had a much laid back atmosphere. The first sermon was a little strange but main preacher made up for it. He gave a really good sermon about the Christmas story that seemed in tune with today’s setting. They also had a small band whose lead singer was very good. My dad seemed to like the music the most this year.

RB and her sister KB came over Christmas morning around 11 for gifts so it was nice to sleep in. I remember not to long ago my little sister would wake me up at the crack of dawn to open presents. Though I suppose it is only fair as I used to do it to my folks when I was a wee lad as well. So after 27 or so years my parents finally get to sleep in on Christmas morning! I wonder if this is the way it is in everyone’s family. Gifts is always fun; however, my video taped everything as usual and as usual it got to be a little too much by the end. I kinda went all out this year buying gifts and with one exception I think the gifts went over well. Even that wasn’t a bad idea, just not the proper fit.

Just because I’m almost 28 doesn’t mean I’m not a kid so now I have to quickly describe my booty: I got a really nice Bulova watch, a full set of golf clubs (awesome), a bunch of golf stuff – aka balls and things –, a 3 pack of movies, a shaving cream pre-heater, and other odds and ends.

Over the entire day we watched just about all the X-mas movies out there. It’s a Wonderful life, Miracle on 34^th St., a Christmas Story, and A Christmas Carol we had already watched Nation Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation a couple of weeks ago. So after having a wonderful Christmas dinner that included Ham, Stuffing, Easter Bread (without the colored eggs), Mashed Potatoes, Turkey, and any other goodie you could think of, my Christmas was certainly complete. I guess I will just have to wait a full year for the next one!

X-Mas Lights!

After a couple year hiatus, I decided this year (aka had the money too) to put up Christmas lights again. I think that I put up quite a show. There are 37 strands of lights, 2 lighted deer, a snowman, 4 sections of white lighted fence, a lighted arbor, and a spiral lighted tree. I was able to get the entire house outlined in lights, all the bushes lighted, and hung some snowflakes in one of the trees. It is so bright that the entire corner of the block that my house is on is lit up. This is the second best time of year next to Halloween. The inside of the house is also being decorated, though most of those decorations are sitting in piles around the dinning room right now.

The lights took quite a bit of time to put up. I worked on hanging them all of last weekend, and a few hours twice during last week and yesterday. And to be honest I will probably put some more up next weekend. I was actually able to stick to a plan so I was able to use half as many power cords this year. So that was nice. Also I found some really cool timers that have light sensors on them. You just tell the timer how many hours to stay on after dark and the lights come on at dusk for that many hours.

Well this was supposed to be an update a week and a half ago…. But obviously I forgot. Just a quick update though – I didn’t put up any more lights. But I do plan to buy some on sale this week for next year!

The Farm and UVA

Before Thomas Jefferson was born part of my family – German immigrants – migrated from there settlement in Pennsylvania down to Virginia and bought a farm between Roanoke and Lynchburg Virginia. It has more or less been in the family every since and my grandmother lives there to this day. Last weekend I used one of the benefits of my wonderful job and flew down there to visit. I have been visiting that farm my entire life and there is always a nice peaceful feeling when you are down there. The house that stands on the farm has been there since 1905 (same year my own home was built) but has been remodeled several times over the years. It is unmistakably a picture perfect big farm house with a large kitchen, dinning room, family room, and rooms for lots of guests. Best of all is that my grandmother lives there.

We had a nice visit, nothing fancy or that out of the ordinary. I was very happy to get several home cooked meals and enjoy hours of conversation about the family. We did a little shopping in the nearby town, saw some Christmas lights, and visited my aunt’s new home. My aunt’s new home is really only new to her, it was built in the 1880s, but it has a lot of potential. I also met her new Beau, a very nice and engaging fellow. The two of them seem vary happy and I’m glad of the addition to the family. She grilled me about RB and asked why I she didn’t come, and how come I wasn’t learning Russia. Because it’s really hard – and I have trouble pronouncing the words but maybe at some point I will.

On Sunday I found I had more time before my flight than I thought, plus I had unlimited miles on the rental and a full tank of gas, so I headed up to Charlotte to visit my friend MM who is going to law school at the prestigious UVA. UVA was founded by one of our country’s founders Thomas Jefferson. He actually wanted to create a University with more of a free flow of ideas where people came and went as they pleased and participated not in classes but discussion. Though UVA uses traditional teaching practices it does so with a Jeffersonian influence. The original honor housing still exists to this day, along with the schools honor code, and mission of the free flow of information from those who possess it to those who desire it. The campus is beautiful with traditional Colonial Virginia styled building in the old campus the houses the undergraduate studies and the modern grand halls that house the graduate programs.

MM lives in quite the house. Normally it is rented by 3^rd year law students then handed down to the ‘worthy’. It is a large rambler with a large living room that houses the normal evening entertainment such as; TV, Movies, and Video games. The bedrooms and facilities seem adequate. The real adventure comes when you venture to the basement. Complete with kegorator, sound system, pool table, beer pong table, and other entertaining areas this house was made for college parties. (quote from MM ‘Ahhhh….Now their keeping eggs in the freaking kegorator!!!???’) As fun as the house must be during the occasional party though, it seems most of the time it is empty as the people who live there are vigorously attending to their law studies.

Anyway that visit was nice to we found a place serving breakfast at 1pm (gotta love college towns), saw the campuses, saw his place, and hung out for a few hours. The drive up there and back was also just great. The colors in the trees were amazing and for some reason there was all most no traffic so I was able to ramble on at my own pace, enjoy being in the middle of nowhere and practice a little stunt driving through the mountains. All in all it was a great weekend – After two weeks though I am ready to be home…. At least for a few days.

Update Old Man Winter

Well it’s 7:43 and I should be in Dayton driving from the hotel to the job site. Instead I’m in Atlanta. My flight to Charlotte was canceled and the flight to Atlanta last night (the one I was originally scheduled on) was delayed so that I missed my connection. So I stayed at the Marriot in Atlanta instead of the Marriot in Beaver Creek OH. That’s really no big deal on hotel or the other.

The fun part of this adventure is to change my flight back last night I got to go through security again! And for the third time I got the super special treatment. So this morning when I got my ticket to go through security guess what I saw printed at the bottom….. SSSS… That means Super Special Security Service.; what it actually means is that for the fourth time in four days I got the grand tour of security or more to the point they got the grand tour of my bags!... Unfortunately my flight this morning is also delayed now due to maintenance. I’ll tell I think united is the only airline I’ve flown since starting this job that has been on time with out issue and I’ve only flown them once.

Final Update:

I got in an hour late and to work an hour earlier than usual. I guess it doesn’t matter who you fly chances are 30% of the time things will hit the fan. You can't control the weather.

Old Man Winter isn’t my best friend.

I decided to go to my grandmother’s house for the weekend and to see my buddy Mitch up at law school this weekend. I didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago if our project would be going on or not so I had to buy the ticket later than I thought. I ended up getting a ticket that wouldn’t get me into Roanoke until after midnight. Unfortunately I found out later that the rental place closes at midnight and I needed to get in earlier. Out went the call to my travel folks for the second week in a row. They really are a top notch crew. They got me on a flight that would get in at 9:30. This would work out a lot better.

When I got to the airport in Dayton the connecting flight had unfortunately been canceled do to weather. Apparently parts of the country were in white-out conditions (did you see the plane slide off the runway in Chicago). So when I got to the counter the clerk wanted to get me back onto the flight that got in after midnight. I told him that wouldn’t work because of the rental arrangements and he got me onto a flight through Dulles on another airline. FYI so far Delta had treated me better than anyone else since I started traveling.

I think all of the changes to my travel arrangements triggered something in the computers because I got flagged for an extra special security check. I remember LJ getting the same treatment back when we went to Vegas. Now of days they got it down to a routine procedure. My boarding pass was put into an orange envelope and I was ushered into another line. I put my stuff through the scanner and then they hauled it over to the super special table. I got super special magic wand-ed over my whole body – That was fun – while then went through my bags by hand. Hmm fun. I’ll have to remember not to make some many changes in such a short time. I don’t think I need the super special treatment at security again.

Most flights started getting canceled so I was worried that I would get stuck in Ohio. There was a little scare, I had already gotten onto the plane and it pushed backed and was de-iced, but then we went no where. The city shut the runway down for 20 min. Luckily once it was cleared we took off.

Dulles was a blur, as I got of the plane onto a shuttle then right back onto another plane. No waiting time thanks to the delays in Dayton. The flight to Roanoke was actually about as long as the flight to Dulles. When we landed they didn’t use stairs to let us off the plane they had a gang plank. It was sleeting hard in Virginia and the plank was slippery. We all had to hold onto the hand rails with a very strong grip and shuffle down the plank to keep from falling. I then got to have the fun of spending 20 minutes clearing the ice off the rental and an extra hour driving on slick roads to get to the house. It was 1 am before I finally got in. But I’m happy because I got where I wanted to be and only was delayed by a few hours so that’s ok with me. I’ll tell you what though, at times it seemed like the weather was doing its best to keep me from traveling.

Update:

Before posting this: Currently I am in the Roanoke airport. I don’t know what is wrong with Delta but they moved me to another Airline again. In Dayton they put me on United and now I’m on US Air. That must have cost them twice as much as what I paid for a ticket no wonder the airlines are in trouble. So I got the super special treatment at security again. Whohoo. Let’s stop the terrorist.

Also of interest is the fact that I went to and visited Mitch today at UVA; beautiful school, great area. The funny thing though that I drove 2 ½ hours from Charlotte to Roanoke and now I’ve been rerouted to through Charlotte to get to Dayton!!! Craziness, just plain Craziness. Hopefully I will get to Dayton tonight.

Working at McDonalds

Well I never thought that after getting a college education and being hired by a top consulting firm I would end up working under the golden arches!....

No I wasn’t the fry-cook.

No I wasn’t the cashier.

No I wasn’t on drive-thru.

No I wasn’t even cleaning.

I was telecommuting.

After trying to work at my grandmother’s house with the company dial up I had to find someplace with high speed internet and hopefully wireless. Believe it or not the only such place in Bedford is the McDonalds. I suppose I could have gone to Roanoke or Lynchburg the closest cities and find a coffee shop but I didn’t think I would have much work to actually do. I was wrong! Instead I took a couple of conference calls, worked with several people on project related issues, worked on the Statement of Work for the current project (the one that should have been signed in October), and host of other activities. All-in-all I probably spent 4 hours hanging out in the McDonalds working.

I think it is really interesting thought that with a cell phone, my laptop, and a good connection to the internet I can work from anywhere. A lot of the work I don’t even need the internet. But when I do I can tell you for sure dial up is not even close to sufficient. The tools we use are simply just too bandwidth intensive. These tools, such as eRooms – a place on the internet everyone store project files—take more than five minutes per page to load. If you have to do 30 or 40 activities that is 1 ½ hours to 3 1/3 hours just waiting on pages loads. It’s just not going to happen! Well I guess I should be thankful for the development of wireless and the fact that equipment and services are so available; even if you do have to go to a McDonalds on Friday to telecommute. I personally like telecommuting much better in my own living room.